A/N: I know that a lot of you want me to keep going, not to mention wanting the wedding of our lovely ladies. It's taken me until now to figure out how to do what I wanted and speed it up a little. Originally I had planned to write out all the major points as their own chapters, but I have had some success with my other major FF combining things in memories and current scenarios, so that's what I'm going to do. I don't want to just end up going "eh, whatever" and never finishing this, so I hope you'll forgive me. ;)

++Katniss++

The time has come, the day that all of us have been looking towards: the day of the assault on the Capitol. I look to my right, a mix of fear and jagged eagerness rubbing just below my breast, and catch Johanna's eye. For a moment we get lost in the gaze, absorbed by the knowledge that no matter what hopes and dreams we have, this could be the last day of our lives, and then she nods to me with a strained smile and looks back to the floor of the hover. Knowing exactly what she means by that, and having the same thoughts myself, I fill my lungs with an unsteady and shaking breath to let myself fall into my preparations again. The cold weight of the rifle in my hands is comforting now, something familiar for me to focus on and keep me from thinking about the fact that the woman I love will not be running right next to me during the assault.

Originally we were supposed to be figureheads, pretty faces and harsh words to galvanize the districts to fight back, but kept on the sidelines for the most part and protected from the real dangers of the battlefield. We changed it ourselves, never letting them do what they wanted to, but even so they tried so hard to force us back into the safety of the camera and away from the front. After District Two, Coin and Plutarch pushed and pulled and cajoled until they came close to driving Johanna and I into insanity, and the only thing that stopped them from succeeding was a surprising alliance between Haymitch, Cressida, and Finnick. Then came the testing for squads, a test that I was actually expected to fail because of my lingering addiction to morphling, a weakness that still eats at me even now, making for some long, rough nights.

It's cold here on the Block, something I wasn't expecting or prepared for. I know that I have to do this alone, that no one else can be with me, but I feel the loss of Johanna's absence just behind me, gnawing at me, pushing at me. I miss her, I need her, she is the only thing that keeps me together, the only thing that keeps me from clawing out my own eyes as the chattering of nerves firing in my head tugs at my awareness. This is what the morphling has done to me, this is what I have done to myself, this is what I have allowed to happen to the symbol of the rebellion. I am weak, and that's just a fact, not to mention stupid and foolish and empty-headed, and the buzz is filling the empty spaces and echoing through me until it's all that there is, and then...

Blessed relief, the starting bell rings and I have a purpose again, a task to complete and a reason to focus on something, anything other than the need that is still there after a month without a dose. I hope it goes away, but Haymitch tells me that it never will, that even after months of being sober he still has a constant craving for a bit of alcohol, just one drink, even though he knows that it'll lead to another and another and another, on and on. Now though, I have a task and I know what to do and how to do it and it helps me steady my nerves and shove aside the tremors of a recovering addict. Targets pop up and I have only a moment to think and react but I never miss, I never slip, I hit the soldiers and I avoid the civilians and there is nothing going wrong. My rifle runs out of bullets and there are no clips in sight so I switch to the bow that is always at my back and sling the empty gun to my hip. Arrow after arrow flies and hits its mark, and then it happens, something changes. A new squad of Peacekeepers swarms the street but before I can draw my string a voice calls out, the voice of my CO, telling me to hit the deck.

The thought runs through my mind that I can take them all out in one shot, there is an explosive pod that I can see set in the wall right next to the advancing soldiers, all it would take is one, single arrow and they are all dead. I draw the string, the red arrow already set on the bow, but just before I let fly I'm struck with a thought. This place is meant to test us, hit our weakness, and what is the one weakness that everyone thinks I have? They know I love Johanna, but even before I had her I couldn't listen to directions, I couldn't take orders, I did things my way. I let the string go loose and hit the ground, tearing open the skin of my left arm with the violence of my descent, and it's over. Someone else blows the pod, the Peacekeepers die, and the scenario is over with a single person applauding over the intercom. When I leave the Block, Boggs is standing there with an appraising look before he snatches my hand and stamps me with the number 251. "Well done, Mockingjay. You're now officially a part of the military of District Thirteen. Squad 251 is the sharpshooters, our top marksmen, and you'll be leading the charge. You get your wish Katniss, you get to take the fight to President Snow."

++Johanna++

This is the day we've wanted for so long, but now that it's here I wish that it was still in the future, that I had just a little more time with Katniss before the end. I don't want to die, I'm terrified that she will, and I know that if she does then it's over. I can't survive that, I've already lost too many people to lose one more, and without her I have no reason to go on. She's the entire reason I'm fighting this war, the entire reason I want to change the world, because I want... no I need to have a life with her, raise a child with her, have all the sappy romantic shit that used to make me sick. I've dragged her kicking and screaming out of a crippling addiction so that she'd be ready for this day(and so I didn't have to live knowing that I ripped out her heart and mine so I didn't have to see her wasting away), but now I need more time.

That look in her eyes when she looked my way tells me all that I need to know, tells me that she's on edge in a way that she hasn't been since going into the arena for the first time. This time it's an entire city that is our arena, trapped the whole way and ready to spit anything those bastards can think of right at the woman I love. I can see the way her hands are gripping the rifle she bears, white knuckles and creaking tendons, a fear that she shouldn't have to deal with eating away at her and filling up the empty places with dread and foul anticipation. I want to reach out to her, to hold her and commiserate with her, to share this burden in the way that I should be able to, but I can't because I have my own worries and my own squad to deal with. This is bullshit of course, but it's what they did to make sure that we fought to the best of our abilities and keep the image of the strong women alive how they wanted it, not how it really is. I really, truly hate politics, but for now I still have to deal with it. Thoughts of how this came to be swallow me up again, helping me to slip into a kind of battle fog.

All I know is that Katniss is already on a squad, no pressure or anything right, I mean it's only her life that's on the line, it's not like I have to be right there next to her just to make sure she comes home to me in one fucking piece. I'm ushered onto the Block to undergo my own test and I run into the silence as a solid, tangible thing. This is new, I've never had the feeling that an absence of sound was the enemy before, but here and now I don't trust the quiet and I want to break it somehow, any way that I can just to make the deafening silence shut up. It pushes me, twists and tugs me, distracting my thoughts and sending them careening into the chasm of reliving my nights, the screaming hell that both my fiancee and I have to live through and with. I remember the way things were the first time I was in the arena, I remember the spray of blood on my face, I remember the iron tang hanging in the air for years and years until the scent of pines filled the need I didn't know I had. Katniss lives through a different hell, her nerves rubbed raw by the addiction I've struggled to break her from, and from what she tells me she has her own memories to replay night after night, with the added horror of imagining the bombing of Twelve, so many people burning.

The starting bell rolls through the air and I sprint forward, needing action to clear the cobwebs from my too-worried mind. Images of the Peacekeepers rush at me, rifles lifting before I blow them away to protect the civilians that run screaming around me in a blind panic. This is easy, this is what I needed, this is exactly what I need to be doing, fighting the war that these fuckers have brought on their own heads. The red fog settles over me and I only see the enemies in front of me as they fall, chaff before the wind, and I'm making good progress before a scream cuts through the battle sleep. I know that voice, I recognize the agony in that voice from waking up to it every time Katniss has a nightmare or a reaction to her body begging for the numbness of morphling. Immediately I turn to run to her only to see two squads enter the street from either side, guns pointed not at me but at the people around me, and their ploy is so obvious that it's ridiculous.

I hear Boggs' voice as he yells out to me to go to Katniss and I'm confused, it doesn't make sense, and yet I still almost follow the order. I know that my weakness is Katniss, I know it intimately, desperately, but I still almost follow the order before my faith in her kicks in. I know she's not really there so that helps, but I also trust that she can handle herself and even if she can't, even if she dies, I'll follow her wherever she goes. I focus on the Peacekeepers around me and start to pull the trigger. Too soon I hear the clicking of an empty gun, and even a cursory glance tells me that there is no more ammo, so I draw the axes at my back and charge into their midst to keep cutting them down when I see a way to end this now, and I understand that my test is two-fold. They also think I won't drop my weapons as long as there are enemies to kill, and I have to show that I know the value of human lives, something I haven't shown before. One ax flies, a pod bursts in a rain of whickering shrapnel, the other ax spins through the air and another pod erupts with a roar of sound and a wall of flames. The scenario is very suddenly over and there is Boggs, waiting for me at the door that leads out of here with a grin that tells me one thing: I succeeded.

I can feel her warmth against my side, I know that Katniss is safe and well, or at least as well as she can be expected to be, and though I already see that we're in separate units, we both made it through and that is enough. That Boggs says that our squads will be working together in the assault is incidental, I'd like to have seen them try to keep us apart. Now we are watching to see Finnick go through his own test on the Block, the hope that he'll make it and be put with one of us very strong indeed. He's a strong man, and if Katniss could make it through, then so can he. This is practically a foregone conclusion, more of a formality than anything, and all that's up for determination is what squad he'll be in though Kat and I both think he'll end up with me. The starting bell rings and his familiar form is splashed on the screen.

Nothing goes haywire, it seems routine and simple and I feel confident that he'll get through, but as the minutes pass I can feel Kat becoming more and more tense. I try and sooth her, my voice soft and making gentle sounds, my hands rubbing on her arms as I work on her, and it doesn't cross my mind that it's not herself that is the issue now, but Finnick and what she's realized they might do to test him. The sharp crack of concrete shattering blasts out of the speakers and my head jerks around in time to see something I should have thought of: a wall of water is rushing down the hill towards the man from District Four. He is frozen in place, a look of fear on his face, and it's only when the wave crashes into him that he reacts, clawing his way to the surface and screaming, an unreasoning panic setting his eyes ablaze. Whatever is left of my friend, the man I knew, is gone and in his place is a terrified little boy caught in the tide and beginning to drown. Boggs swears and hits a lever, the switches set in the floor opening floodgates to allow the water to rush out.

Finnick is lying on the ground in a tight ball, shivering and darting his gaze about, waiting for the torture to start again. After so long here in District Thirteen, I had hoped to see him vastly improved, perhaps even past this fear, but is was not to be. No one can get close to him until he sees my face, feels the tiny frame of my Katniss cannon into him, hears our voices telling him that he is safe, no one is going to electrocute him. Seconds stretch on forever yet eventually he weakly nods his head and allows us to pull him up off of the pavement, half-carrying him out of the Block and down the halls to his own quarters. The sadness written on our faces when we reach the room has Annie on her feet and wrapping around him the moment we close the door, her need to take care of him outweighing her own trepidation about the damp of his clothes. I sigh a heavy sigh as the realization finally settles in that I will not have Finnick at my side in the war that the Capitol has wrought.

++Katniss++

The hover sets down with a bump and a whine, the sounds echoed several more times in a quieter way over the next few minutes as our entire platoon settles to earth. The doors slide open and suddenly it's like I'm back in District Two, the base camp seemingly stretching on forever though I'm sure it's only a few square blocks. Tents are everywhere, and the only demarcation seems to be in the form of small banners with the squad numbers on them hanging from the larger tents, though there really weren't any small tents, and I can see the banners for 251 and 266 side-by-side, Johanna grinning when it catches her eye too. One more proof that they won't try to control us too much, one more reason to be glad of making it this far, one more way to make Snow pay for the terrible things he has done to us all our lives.

Boggs leads us to the biggest tent in sight, one that is without banners except for one that has the same mockingjay symbol that became so popular after my first win in the Games. That fact piles on top of the armor that Johanna and I are wearing, the weapons we carry, the training we've received, the faces of those around us, and it all threatens to drive me to my knees again, panic roaring to life in my heart before my lumberjack's strong hands grip my shoulders in reassurance. We're really here, we're really doing this, preparing for the most important and most dangerous battle in the war to free the districts, and it all comes down to this, the training boiling down to are we good enough? My voice is hoarse but strong as I whisper, "Thanks Jojo. Thanks for staying with me, for standing with me." I don't say that I want to spend my whole life with her, she knows that. I don't tell her that I want to live in the woods away from people after this, she'll say the same. I don't say a lot of things, simple things, little things that don't matter, but the most important thing that I don't say is that if this doesn't go well, if I die, I want her to live on and remember me. I don't say it because that chance hurts, but also I don't say it because I know she won't. She won't want to live without me, I know it, and I know it with so much certainty because I wouldn't want to live on if she died here. I couldn't, and I can't ask her to do something that I can't, that I wouldn't do myself.

I look to her and see the concern on her face, a weak smile answering on my lips as I shrug off her hands and snatch one to cling to for support. Now that we are here, I need her more than ever, and I know that she sees that and feels something similar, a quiet piece of knowledge that I can see written in the little things about her. The tenseness of her shoulders that eases when I squeeze her hand, the worry that never leaves her eyes now, the smile that tries to lift her lips but doesn't have the strength to overcome the nebulous possibilities of the next thirty-six hours. I see it in the hitch in her stride, the tiny proof of the minor neurological damage a shotgun blast to the chest was able to cause even with our armor in place. I feel it in the taut strength of the tendons in her hand as she grips tighter than necessary just so she knows that I'm not going to run away or crumble and beg for morphling to take away the pain and doubt. I know, and so does she. A deep breath in tandem, and then we're walking into the command tent, ready to begin planning and coordination. This time, there is nowhere left to run, to time left to doubt, and no more chances to rest. It's time.

A/N: Et voila! Part one of a -gasp!- three part recounting of the battle for the Capitol. At least, that's what I intend to do, though I don't know if I'll manage it quite that way. I would say that I enjoyed writing this chapter, but the simple fact is that I didn't. I took no pleasure in breaking Finnick again, and I had to think like a survivor of war for the rest of it. This isn't supposed to be a happy part of the story anymore, and it isn't supposed to be the "I find comfort in your arms even in hell" kind of thing either. Now these women are lucky to just make it through the day with each other's help, and I hope to be able to show that in my writing better than I have in the past. Keep in mind, dear readers, that we all know of at least one horrible event to come, and the way the story is going and is supposed to go, there might be more. ;) You never know.